the essential
The Court of Appeal will have to rule this week on the amount of damages that François Fillon and his wife, Pénélope Fillon, will have to reimburse in the context of the case on fictitious jobs.
What penalties will François Fillon be sentenced to in the affair of his wife's fictitious jobs? The Paris Court of Appeal re-examines on Monday the sanctions imposed on the former Prime Minister, found definitively guilty of embezzlement of public funds. After a judgment at first instance and another on appeal, this is the third trial in this resounding case, which had stopped the right-wing candidate's leading race for the 2017 presidential election.
François Fillon should be present at the hearing which begins at 1:30 p.m., announced his lawyer Me Antonin Lévy, who did not wish to comment. The 70-year-old former Prime Minister was found definitively guilty by the Court of Cassation in April, but it ordered a new hearing to reassess his prison sentences, fines and ineligibility.
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On appeal, on May 9, 2022, the former tenant of Matignon was sentenced to four years of imprisonment, including one year, a fine of 375,000 euros and 10 years of ineligibility. His wife, Pénélope Fillon, was sentenced to two years in prison, as well as a fine of 375,000 euros, and his ex-deputy, Marc Joulaud, was sentenced to three years in prison, with respective ineligibility. two and five years old. The three defendants were also ordered to pay a total of approximately 800,000 euros in damages to the National Assembly.
“Timeline”
The Court of Cassation confirmed the sentences of the 69-year-old Franco-Welsh woman and the 57-year-old former deputy for Sarthe.
On the other hand, the high court, which controls compliance with the rules of law and not the merits of the cases, considered that the Paris Court of Appeal had not sufficiently justified the firm part of the sentence imposed on François Fillon.
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Furthermore, the Court ruled that the amount of 126,167 euros, awarded to the National Assembly in damages for Pénélope Fillon's parliamentary assistant contract with her husband in 2012-2013, had been incorrectly assessed, in to the extent that the court of appeal recognized that Pénélope Fillon had nevertheless carried out certain tasks. Other damages are definitely owed by the Fillon couple. According to a parliamentary source, partially confirming information from BFMTVFrançois Fillon and the National Assembly are finalizing “the schedule and payment terms” for an amount of 679,989 euros.
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As Monday's trial approaches, communicating about this approach “is a way of showing that he is in a good position to carry out his obligations of justice”, believes this source. The affair broke out in January 2017 with the revelations of Canard Enchainé, when François Fillon was a candidate for the right and the center in the presidential election.
Herald of integrity, he was indicted and finally eliminated in the first round.
Justice could also have to rule in another case of suspicion of fictitious employment concerning the one who has now left politics: a PNF investigation is still underway concerning a parliamentary assistant contract signed by François Fillon between 2013 and 2015. The investigations consist of determining whether he could hire, with public funds, Maël Renouard, his “pen” when he was at Matignon, to write his book program for the presidential election, “Faire”, published in september 2015.
